Nicholas Lalla

Hardcover (1 to 2 lbs)

Virginia

How One City's Inclusive Approach to Innovation and Growth Can Revive the American Dream

The story of one city's efforts to reinvent itself in the heartland is a powerful example of the change America needs.

Reinventing the Heartland

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Mark Binelli

Light Paperback (1 lb or less)

New York

The Afterlife of an American Metropolis

"Once America's capitalist dream town, Detroit is our country's greatest urban failure, having fallen the longest and the farthest. But the city's worst crisis yet (and that's saying something) has managed to do the unthinkable: turn the end of days into a laboratory for the future. Urban planners, land speculators, neo-pastoral agriculturalists, and utopian environmentalists--all have been drawn to Detroit's baroquely decaying, nothing-left-to-lose frontier. With an eye for both the darkly absurd and the radically new, Detroit-area native and Rolling Stone writer Mark Binelli has chronicled this convergence. Throughout the city's "museum of neglect"--its swaths of abandoned buildings, its miles of urban prairie--he tracks the signs of blight repurposed, from the school for pregnant teenagers to the killer ex-con turned street patroller, from the organic farming on empty lots to GM's wager on the Volt electric car and the mayor's realignment plan (the most ambitious on record) to move residents of half-empty neighborhoods into a viable, new urban center. Sharp and impassioned, Detroit City Is the Place to Be is alive with the sense of possibility that comes when a city hits rock bottom. Beyond the usual portrait of crime, poverty, and ruin, we glimpse a future Detroit that is smaller, less segregated, greener, economically diverse, and better functioning--what might just be the first post-industrial city of our new century"--

Detroit City Is the Place to Be

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Matrix

Women and the Manmade Environment

Timely re-issue of the groundbreaking manifesto for feminist architecture Making Space is a pioneering work first published in 1984 which challenges us to look at how the built environment impacts on women’s lives. It exposes the sexist assumptions on gender and sexuality that have a fundamental impact on the way buildings are designed and our cities are planned. Written collaboratively by the feminist collective Matrix, tthe book provide a full blown critique of the patriarchal built environment both in the home and in public space, and outline alternative forms of practice that are still relevant today. Making Space remains a path breaking book pointing to possibilities of a feminist future. Some authors worked for the London-based Matrix Feminist Architect’s collective, an architectural practice set up in 1980 seeking to establish a feminist approach to design. They worked on design projects—such as community, children and women’s centres. Others were engaged in building work, teaching and research. The new edition comes with a new introduction examining the context, process and legacy of Making Space written by leading feminists in architecture.

Making Space

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Helena Moncrieff

Michigan

The Enduring Power of the Urban Food Forest

When was the last time you picked fruit from a city tree? This book explores how growing troops of urban harvesters are gathering in a locally based movement, digs into the history of city fruit trees, and follows urban-grown fruits from the tree to the table.

The Fruitful City

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Edward Glaeser

David Cutler

Paperback (1 to 2 lbs)

The Future of Urban Life in an Age of Isolation

One of our great urbanists and one of our great public health experts join forces to reckon with how cities are changing in the face of existential threats the pandemic has only accelerated Cities can make us sick. That’s always been true—diseases spread more easily when more people are close to one another. And cities have been demonized as breeding grounds for vice and crime from Sodom and Gomorrah on. But cities have flourished nonetheless because they are humanity’s greatest invention, indispensable engines for creativity, innovation, wealth, and civilization itself. But cities now stand at a crossroads. During the global COVID crisis, cities grew silent; the normal forms of socializing ground to a halt. How permanent are these changes? Advances in technology mean that many people can opt out of city life as never before. Will they? Are we on the brink of a post-urban world? City life will survive, but individual cities face terrible risks, argue Edward Glaeser and David Cutler, and a wave of urban failure would be absolutely disastrous. In terms of intimacy and inspiration, nothing can replace what cities offer. But great cities have always demanded great management, and our current crisis has exposed fearful gaps in our capacity for good governance. In America, Glaeser and Cutler argue, deep inequities in health care and education are a particular blight on the future of our cities; solving them will be the difference between our collective good health and a downward spiral to a much darker place.

Survival of the City

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Richard F. Babcock

Light Hardcover (1 lb or less)

California

Municipal Practices and Policies

Analysis of urban planning policies and practices in the USA, with particular reference to zoning and suburban area activity.

The Zoning Game

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Did you know that it took ten million bricks to build the Empire State Building?

Did you know that residents of the John Hancock Center sometimes have to call down to the doorman to find out the weather on the streets below?

Did you know a building in Dubai is planned to be nearly one half mile high?

In Skyscraper, Lynn Curlee delves into one of man's endless fascinations -- building as high in the sky as possible.

From the the Empire State Building to the Chrysler Building, to the Sears and Hancock Towers, to the Petronas Towers in Kuala Lumpur, to the World Trade Center, Curlee captures all the drama, excitement, and tragedy of man's attempt to reach ever closer to the clouds. Skyscraper details the history of these monuments to ambition, science, and curiosity, beginning with their origins at the Pyramid of Giza and the Eiffel Tower and then moving to New York (the skyscraper capital of the world), Chicago, Boston, and finally to the skyward expansion that is spreading across the globe.

Skyscraper

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Jane H. Kay

Heavy Hardcover (2 to 4 lbs)

Connecticut

How the Automobile Took over America and How We Can Take It Back

Today our world revolves around the car - as a nation, we spend eight billion hours a year stuck in traffic. In Asphalt Nation, Jane Holtz Kay effectively calls for a revolution to reverse our automobile-dependency. Citing successful efforts in places from Portland, Maine, to Portland, Oregon, Kay shows us that radical change is not impossible by any means. She demonstrates that there are economic, political, architectural, and personal solutions that can steer us out of the mess. Asphalt Nation is essential reading for everyone interested in the history of our relationship with the car, and in the prospect of returning to a world of human mobility.

Asphalt Nation

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Jeff Speck

Heavy Paperback (2 to 4 lbs)

101 Steps to Making Better Places

“Cities are the future of the human race, and Jeff Speck knows how to make them work.” —David Owen, staff writer at the New Yorker Nearly every US city would like to be more walkable—for reasons of health, wealth, and the environment—yet few are taking the proper steps to get there. The goals are often clear, but the path is seldom easy. Jeff Speck’s follow-up to his bestselling Walkable City is the resource that cities and citizens need to usher in an era of renewed street life. Walkable City Rules is a doer’s guide to making change in cities, and making it now. The 101 rules are practical yet engaging—worded for arguments at the planning commission, illustrated for clarity, and packed with specifications as well as data. For ease of use, the rules are grouped into 19 chapters that cover everything from selling walkability, to getting the parking right, escaping automobilism, making comfortable spaces and interesting places, and doing it now! Walkable City was written to inspire; Walkable City Rules was written to enable. It is the most comprehensive tool available for bringing the latest and most effective city-planning practices to bear in your community. The content and presentation make it a force multiplier for place-makers and change-makers everywhere.

Walkable City Rules

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Gerard Koeppel

History of the creation of the New York City grid.  What went right and what went wrong.

How New York Became New York

The never-before-told story of the grid that ate Manhattan

City on a Grid

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Jane Jacobs

Iowa

Penetrating analysis of the functions and organization of city neighborhoods, the forces of deterioration and regeneration, and the necessary planning innovations

The Death and Life of Great American Cities

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This book illuminates Frederick Law Olmsted's role as a major cultural figure and a man at the epicenter of nineteenth-century American history.

-Central Park
-Stanford campus
-Boston's Back Bay Fens
-Illinois's Riverside community
-Biltmore Estate
-Louisville's park system

Frederick Law Olmsted and America in the Nineteenth Century

A Clearing in the Distance

South Carolina

How Our Greatest Invention Makes Us Richer, Smarter, Greener, Healthier, and Happier

Shortlisted for the Financial Times and McKinsey Best Book of the Year Award in 2011 “A masterpiece.” —Steven D. Levitt, coauthor of Freakonomics “Bursting with insights.” —The New York Times Book Review A pioneering urban economist presents a myth-shattering look at the majesty and greatness of cities America is an urban nation, yet cities get a bad rap: they're dirty, poor, unhealthy, environmentally unfriendly . . . or are they? In this revelatory book, Edward Glaeser, a leading urban economist, declares that cities are actually the healthiest, greenest, and richest (in both cultural and economic terms) places to live. He travels through history and around the globe to reveal the hidden workings of cities and how they bring out the best in humankind. Using intrepid reportage, keen analysis, and cogent argument, Glaeser makes an urgent, eloquent case for the city's importance and splendor, offering inspiring proof that the city is humanity's greatest creation and our best hope for the future.

Triumph of the City

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Witold Rybczynski

Some general aging, yellowing of pages, a few slight marks. Spine intact, pages clean.

North Carolina

In City Life, Witold Rybczynski, bestselling author of Now I Sit Me Down, looks at what we want from cities, how they have evolved, and what accounts for their unique identities. In this vivid description of everything from the early colonial settlements to the advent of the skyscraper to the changes wrought by the automobile, the telephone, the airplane, and telecommuting, Rybczynski reveals how our urban spaces have been shaped by the landscapes and lifestyles of the New World.

City Life

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Hugo Macdonald

New Jersey

Building a relationship with a city is a lot like building a relationship with another person--just as cities can be intoxicating, generous and inspiring, so they can also be dangerous, fickle and impenetrable. This is a book for navigating and nurturing this important relationship. Hugo Macdonald believes you need to feel a city to understand it. He won't tell you how wide the perfect pavement should be but he will show you how to walk down a pavement with eyes wide open. This is a book to help you feel human in an inhuman environment.

How to Live in the City: the School of Life

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Ada Louise Huxtable

The author brings clarity and passion to her consideration of the problems and pleasures of architecture and urban planning.

Kicked a Building Lately?

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James Howard Kunstler

This book not only shows that the original American dream stoll has a strong hold on our imaginations but also offers innovative, practical ways to make that dream a reality.

Remaking Our Everyday World for the 21st Century

In his landmark book The Geography of Nowhere James Howard Kunstler visited the "tragic sprawlscape of cartoon architecture, junked cities, and ravaged countryside" America had become and declared that the deteriorating environment was not merely a symptom of a troubled culture, but one of the primary causes of our discontent. In Home from Nowhere Kunstler not only shows that the original American Dream -- the desire for peaceful, pleasant places in which to work and live -- still has a strong hold on our imaginations, but also offers innovative, eminently practical ways to make that dream a reality. Citing examples from around the country, he calls for the restoration of traditional architecture, the introduction of enduring design principles in urban planning, and the development of public spaces that acknowledge our need to interact comfortable with one another.

Home from Nowhere

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Clifton Hood

This book traces the complex and fascinating history of the New York City subway system.

The Building of the Subways and How They Transformed New York

Clifton Hood traces the complex and fascinating history of the New York City subway system. At its opening in 1904, the tracks covered the twenty-two miles from City Hall up to 145th Street and Broadway, the longest stretch ever built at one time. From that initial route through the completion of the IND, the Independent Subway, in the 1940s, the subway grew to cover 722 miles -- long enough to reach from New York to Chicago. "Clifton Hood's 722 Miles is the fullest and most authoritative account of the building and impact of the New York City subways, the most extensive system of urban transportation in the United States and perhaps the world." -- Nathan Glazer, Harvard University "A clear, perceptive and carefully researched study of this engineering feat and the ways in which the subway led to an expansion of the metropolitan area." -- Publishers Weekly

722 Miles

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Fergus Bordewich

“A splendid and eminently readable account of both the seamy and the idealistic impulses that placed our nation’s capial where it is.”

How Slaves, Idealists, and Scoundrels Created the Nation's Capital

Washington, D.C., is home to the most influential power brokers in the world. But how did we come to call D.C.--a place one contemporary observer called a mere swamp "producing nothing except myriads of toads and frogs (of enormous size)," a district that was strategically indefensible, captive to the politics of slavery, and a target of unbridled land speculation--our nation's capital? In Washington, acclaimed and award-winning author Fergus M. Bordewich turns his eye to the backroom deal making and shifting alliances between our Founding Fathers and in doing so pulls back the curtain on the lives of slaves who actually built the city. The answers revealed in this eye-opening book are not only surprising and exciting but also illuminate a story of unexpected triumph over a multitude of political and financial obstacles, including fraudulent real estate speculation, overextended financiers, and management more apt for a "banana republic" than an emerging world power.

In this page-turning work that reveals the hidden and somewhat unsavory side of the nation's beginnings, Bordewich, once again, brings his novelist's sensibility to a little-known chapter in American history.

Washington

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Kevin Bone

Eugenia Bone

Mary Beth Betts

Vividly presents the waterfront's development and offers a comprehensive picture of the New York waterfront.

Evolution and Building Culture of the Port and Harbor

Created by a team of architects, historians, teachers, and students, The New York Waterfront is an unprecedented documentation of the rise and fall of the waterfront's architectural, technological, industrial, and commercial existence over the past 150 years. This densely illustrated book vividly presents and preserves the waterfront's development. Superb watercolor, ink, and pencil drawings-some specially created for this publication-as well as rare historic pictures, aerial photographs, and maps culled from a wide variety of sources and reproduced here for the first time, make this book the most comprehensive study on the subject. Newly commissioned photographs by Stanley Greenberg supplement this already rich array of images, often bringing out the melancholy beauty of the waterfront in its present derelict state. Also seen here are many major modern sites-the Red Hook Water Pollution Control Plant, the Port Authority Grain Elevators, the Fresh Kills Landfill, and the Brooklyn Navy Yard-capturing the nameless, inhospitable tracts whose only landmarks are the rusting remains of a once vital commercial life. This illustrative material, together with a series of informative texts written by critics and scholars, reveals a complete picture of the New York waterfront through contemporary projects and visionary proposals, environmental plans and master-planning, built and unbuilt waterfront structures (pier warehouses, recreation piers, markets, and ferry terminals), in addition to a meticulous analysis of a variety of documents and records. The New York Waterfront offers a unique perspective on waterfront building so that the lessons of the past can inform decisions about the future. This publication also inspires us to strive for an equivalent greatness when designing the urban fabric of the twenty-first century, the kind of greatness in public works that has in the past distinguished New York City.

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Nicholas Lalla

Reinventing the Heartland

Mark Binelli

Detroit City Is the Place to Be

Matrix

Making Space

Helena Moncrieff

The Fruitful City

Edward Glaeser; David Cutler

Survival of the City

Richard F. Babcock

The Zoning Game

Lynn Curlee

Skyscraper

Jane H. Kay

Asphalt Nation

Jeff Speck

Walkable City Rules

Gerard Koeppel

City on a Grid

Jane Jacobs

The Death and Life of Great American Cities

Witold Rybczynski

A Clearing in the Distance

Edward Glaeser

Triumph of the City

Witold Rybczynski

City Life

Jane Jacobs

The Death and Life of Great American Cities

Hugo Macdonald

How to Live in the City: the School of Life

Ada Louise Huxtable

Kicked a Building Lately?

James Howard Kunstler

Home from Nowhere

Clifton Hood

722 Miles

Jane Jacobs

The Death and Life of Great American Cities

Jane Jacobs

The Death and Life of Great American Cities

Fergus Bordewich

Washington

Jane Jacobs

The Death and Life of Great American Cities

Kevin Bone; Eugenia Bone; Mary Beth Betts

New York Waterfront